Political Quotes

“If we would simply do our job, we would not have to have tax increases, we would not have to have spending cuts that will gut our military, although I can show a lot of waste in the military too, to the tune of $50 billion a year. But if we would just do our job and actually look in detail--the way GAO has recommended and the way Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has oversighted through the years, thanks to the leadership of Lieberman, Collins, Carper, and those who preceded them--what we will see is we have all this research, we have all this knowledge, we have all this stuff we know we can do, but we have no leadership in the Senate to get it done, and we bring a budget forward that perpetuates everything I just showed. There is no mandate for every committee to eliminate total duplication in this budget. There is no mandate in this budget to consolidate like programs and eliminate cross-agency interference and duplication. There is no mandate in this budget that every grant program ought to have a metric on it to see if it actually accomplishes something. There is no metric in this budget to give the agencies the power and the resources to actually administer the grants effectively so we know what they are doing--none of that. This is all ignored. As long as we say the only problem is saving Medicare and saving Social Security and saving the Defense Department, we are going to continue to waste $200 billion a year. I do not know what it is.…”